Translation Shift: A Perspective Of Translation Of Business Contracts

Translation shift is a common means employed frequently in business contract translation. However, it seems that as of no scientific analysis has ever been conducted in business contract translation. Hence, the present endeavor attempts to examine the shift in English-Chinese and Chinese-English business contract translation, explore into the underlying reasons accounting for these shifts, and put forward yardsticks to assess translation shifts in legal context. To achieve this goal, three elements are pinned down in the present paper: 1) types of translation shifts applicable in business contract translation between English and Chinese; 2) reasons accounting for the applicability of translation shift in the contract translation between English and Chinese; 3) yardsticks to assess the employment of translation shifts in contract translation.In the present paper, translation shift is defined as all that appears as new with respect to the original and is to be analyzed from both micro and macro levels. At the micro level, there are level shift, unit shift, class shift, structure shift and system shift. And at the macro level, there are rhetorical shift and stylistic shift. Based on the exploration of reasons accounting for shifts employed in business contract translation between English and Chinese, two yardsticks are raised for assessing the employment of translation shifts.In order to analyze the shifts employed in business contract translation between English and Chinese, a number of examples are extracted from three contracts. And the format designed by Munday is used in the process of analysis.It is hoped that the researching framework established in the present paper can contribute to the guidance of practical business contract translation and quality assessment.